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Epiphenomenalism is a mind-body philosophy marked by the belief that basic physical events (sense organs, neural impulses, and muscle contractions) are causal with respect to mental events (thought, consciousness, and cognition). Mental events are viewed as completely dependent on physical functions and, as such, have no independent existence or causal efficacy; it is a mere appearance. Fear seems makes the heart beat faster; though, according to epiphenomenalism, the state of the nervous system causes the heart to beat faster. Because mental events are a kind of overflow that cannot cause anything physical, epiphenomenalism is viewed as a version of monism.

During the seventeenth century, Rene Descartes argued that animals are subject to mechanical laws of nature. He defended the idea of automatic behavior, or the performance of actions without conscious thought. Descartes questioned how the immaterial mind and the material body can interact causally. His interactionist model (1649) held that the body relates to the mind through the pineal gland.

Thomas Henry Huxley agreed with Descartes that behavior is determined solely by physical mechanisms, but he also believed that humans enjoy an intelligent life. In 1874, Huxley argued that animals are conscious automata in the Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Huxley proposed that psychical changes are collateral products of physical changes. He termed the stream of consciousness an “epiphenomenon;” like the bell of a clock that has no role in keeping the time, consciousness has no role in determining behavior.

Huxley defended automatism by testing reflex actions, originally supported by Descartes. Huxley hypothesized that frogs that undergo lobotomy would swim when thrown into water, despite being unable to initiate actions. He argued that the ability to swim was solely dependent on the molecular change in the brain, concluding that consciousness is not necessary for reflex actions. According to epiphenomenalism, animals experience pain only as a result of neurophysiology.

In 1870, Huxley conducted a case study on a French soldier who had sustained a shot in the Franco-Prussian War that fractured his left parietal bone. Every few weeks the soldier would enter a trance-like state, smoking, dressing himself, and aiming his cane like a rifle all while being insensitive to pins, electric shocks, odorous substances, vinegar, noise, and certain light conditions. Huxley used this study to show that consciousness was not necessary to execute these purposeful actions, justifying the assumption that humans are insensible machines. Huxley’s mechanistic attitude towards the body convinced him that the brain alone causes behavior.

There are few modern supporters of epiphenomenalism. George Santayana (1905) believed that all motion has merely physical causes. Because consciousness is accessory to life and not essential to it, natural selection is responsible for ingraining tendencies to avoid certain contingencies without any conscious achievement involved. In 1970, Keith Campbell proposed his “new epiphenomenalism”, which states that the body produces a spiritual mind that does not act on the body. How the brain causes a spiritual mind, according to Campbell, is destined to remain beyond our understanding forever. In 2001, David Chalmers and Frank Jackson argued that claims about conscious states should be deduced a priori from claims about physical states alone. They offered that epiphenomenalism bridges, but does not close, the explanatory gap between the physical and the phenomenal realms.